All Sets Are Good: Legends

How many words have been written arguing that Set X is the Worst Set Ever™? How many hours of YouTube videos are dedicated to ranting about how Magic: The Gathering is dying and Wizards of the Coast sucks and the latest set is terrible? Too many. Inspired by a thread I saw on Twitter about criticism and negativity in video game fandom, I want to set aside "edginess" and cynicism to bring some positivity back to Magic content. If we approach a set with no preconceptions, no unrealistic expectations, we reach a simple conclusion: All Sets Are Good.

This is a special edition of All Sets Are Good. This week, to celebrate the release of Dominaria and Magic's return to its most storied plane, we're taking a look at Legends. Not only was Legends set on Dominaria, it was the set that introduced the legendary mechanic that features prominently in Dominaria.

Legends: The Bad

Legends isn't a bad set given the time of its creation. Legends was one of the first Magic expansions to be designed, back when Wizards of the Coast only had five employees. Steve Conard and Robin Herbert designed the set in Vancouver after being introduced to Magic by Peter Adkinson. Steve was one of the five founders of Wizards of the Coast, and he recounted the story of Legends design for magicthegathering.com in 2002. Legends suffers from the same problems that most of the early sets fell victim to: wildly unbalanced cards, an ill-defined color pie, and trying to do too many things at once. For every Mana Drain, there's a Touch of Darkness. The ideas used in Legends, however, would go on to define the game of Magic.

The Good: Mechanics

Legends was the first set to feature multicolored spells, cards that require more than one color of mana to cast. While these have become a staple of Magic, at the time this was revolutionary. Interestingly, the only multicolored cards in the set were the legendary creatures, making them stand out even more.

Poison was also introduced in Legends,though it only appeared on two cards: Pit Scorpion and Serpent Generator. This was the first alternate win condition in Magic and would go on to appear in numerous sets, most recently in New Phyrexia.

Legends biggest innovation, however, were the titular legends. These legendary creatures represented unique characters, and as such only one card with that name could be on the battlefield at a time. The Legend Rule has gone through a number of changes over the years, which I'll go into later, but the core concept of unique singular creatures in card form has persisted. Legends also introduced legendary lands representing unique locations.

World enchantments are enchantments that represent a spell so powerful it transports the battlefield to another plane of existence. As such, there can only be one world enchantment on the battlefield at a time. If any player plays a world enchantment, all other world enchantments on the battlefield are put into their owners' graveyards as a state-based action. The concept of world enchantments would later inspire the Planechase variant, with a deck of cards representing the battle moving to a different plane of the Multiverse with different effects on the battle.

The other mechanics introduced in Legends were less exciting: rampage and bands with other. Rampage N is a keyword ability that give a creature +N/+N until end of turn for each creature blocking it beyond the first. Bands with other is one of the most counter-intuitive abilities ever introduced to Magic. Bands with other is a variant of banding (itself a difficult mechanic to understand) that restricts banding to cards with the same bands-with-other ability. The Magic 2010 rules update actually changed bands with other to make it more intuitive: bands with other now means the creature can band with creatures that share the specific characteristic, such as Master of the Hunt's Wolves of the Hunt tokens being able to band with other creatures named Wolves of the Hunt.

The Good: Notable Cards

Legends brought a number of important cards to Magic that would go on to become key parts of the game. Mana Drain is one of the best counterspells ever printed. The world enchantments Nether Void and The Abyss see significant play in eternal formats. Chain Lightning is a Legacy Burn staple. The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, a key card in the Legacy Lands deck, is currently the most valuable non-Power 9 card in Magic, with copies selling for as much as $3500 USD following a recent buyout.

Of the legendary creatures in Legends, one cycle stands above all others: the elder dragons. These creatures would become the namesake commanders for a niche variant of Magic known as Elder Dragon Highlander (You might have heard of it.) One of these, Nicol Bolas, is the current Big Bad of the Magic story.

Being set on Dominaria, there are a number of callbacks to the people and places of legends in Dominaria:

Tetsuo Umezawa: Tetsuo Umezawa, one-time Emperor's Fist of Nicol Bolas's Madaran Empire, betrayed the elder dragon. He cast the Meteor Hammer spell, destroyed the Imperial Shrine, and trapped Bolas's spirit in the Meditation Realm. Finally on even grounds with the Planeswalker, Tetsuo rendered Bolas mostly-dead (His spark survived in a nearby time rift.) Tetsuo's descendant, Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive, is the latest in a long line of Umezawas.

Nicol Bolas: Speaking of Bolas, he appears on two cards in Dominaria: The Eldest Reborn, which shows his return from the Madaran Rift just before the Mending, and In Bolas's Clutches, which shows the consequences of Liliana destroying her final demon and defaulting on her contract.

Torsten Von Ursus: Torsten was the founder of Benalia. His Lost Edict would, after his death, leave the care of the nation in the hands of his seven lieutenants, who became the founders of the seven clans. Torsten is depicted in the stained glass window shown in History of Benalia.

Urborg: When the plane of Rath overlayed onto Dominaria at the opening of the Phyrexian invasion, the Stronghold, seat of power for Rath's Evincar and source of the flowstone that made up the artificial plane, materialized in Urborg. Belzenlok has taken over the ruins of the Stronghold and made it the headquarters for the Cabal, as shown on Cabal Stronghold. Urborg is also home to the frog spirit Yargle, Glutton of Urborg.

The Good: Flavor and Story

Legends didn't have a story, per se. The set was filled with fantastic places and powerful heroes and villains, but with a few exceptions the characters and settings of Legends existed in a vacuum. Many of these characters would appear in early Magic comics, but for the most part they weren't expanded upon until the Legends novels in 2001-2002. The first trilogy of Legends novels (Legends Cycle I) retold one of the old comic stories but expanded it to three novels (Johan, Jedit, and Hazezon, named for the legendary creatures Johan, Jedit Ojanen, and Hazezon Tamar). The second trilogy (Legends Cycle II, consisting of Assassin's Blade, Emperor's Fist, and Champion's Trial) focused on Nicol Bolas and his Madaran Empire. These stories, both the pre-revision comics and the Legends Cycles I and II, firmly established that all of the places and people from Legends were located on Dominaria.

Even though it lacked a cohesive story at the time of its design, Legends was one of the most flavorful sets of early Magic. The designs were mostly top-down and captured Steve and Robin's vision of a greater world of powerful individuals. Even the wonky bad cards were flavorful. How would you stop a group of creatures who could travel the open plains? You build a Great Wall. How do you turn an unfavorable battle around and save your army? You blanket the battlefield in Darkness.

Conclusion

Much of what we take for granted today about Magic came from Legends. The idea that a spell could be cast using multiple colors of mana? The concept of historic figures and places as cards in your deck? The idea of alternate win conditions beyond life total and decking? All because of Legends.

Do you have a particular card from Legends that you love? Have you built a The Lady of the Mountain Commander deck you'd like to share? What set would you like to see get the All Sets Are Good™ treatment next? Let us know in the comments or tweet me at @_kaburi_!

Bonus Content! All Rules Are Good: the Legend Rule

Legends introduced the Legend Rule, or at least the first version of it. The rules surrounding legendary permanents have been changed twice now. When Legends was released, the legendary supertype only applied to lands (This would later be expanded to artifacts in Stronghold and enchantments in Betrayers of Kamigawa.) All legendary creatures had the creature type Legend, which gave us such fun text as Ertai, Wizard Adept's "Ertai, Wizard Adept counts as a Wizard" because the rules and templates of the era didn't allow for Legends to have other creature types.

The original Legend Rule stated that there could only be one Legend or legendary permanent with a given name on the battlefield at the same time. If you drew a second copy, that card was dead in your hand—you couldn't cast it. This didn't just apply to permanents you control—if you opponent had a copy of Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero on the battlefield, you couldn't cast your copy. This was never really a problem until the Rebel decks of the Mercadian Masques block, when games often came down to races to see who could cast Lin Sivvi first.

Interestingly, when Legends was first released, all Legends and legendary lands were immediately added to the Restricted List—the justification being that since they were unique places and people, you should only be allowed to have one copy in your deck (That policy, thankfully, didn't last very long.)

When Champions of Kamigawa was released, the Legend Rule was changed. The legendary supertype now applied to creatures, the Legend creature type was discontinued, and the Legend Rule itself was rewritten. Now, playing a second copy of a legendary permanent caused all other copies on the battlefield to be put into their owner's graveyards as a state-based effect. The Legend Rule still looked at permanents controlled by both players, which meant that redundant copies of a given legendary permanent now acted as pseudo-removal spells.

The current version of the Legend Rule was implemented with Magic 2014. Two important changes were made to the Legend Rule: now, rather than destroying all other copies of the legendary permanent when it enters the battlefield, the player may choose which copy to keep; in addition, the Legend Rule only applies to permanents that player controls. Two players may each control one copy of a legendary permanent with the same name. A slight tweak to the Legend Rule would come with Ixalan: the Planeswalker Uniqueness Rule was eliminated and all planeswalkers were given the legendary supertype.

Comments

hyalapterouslemur broke the mechanics down well, but interestingly, the flaws we might find with Legends are almost all due to the incredible shifts in game literacy and game design theory that we have seen in the decades since this set came out. There are many cards here that are not fun because they slow down play, hose really specific strategies, or seem cool but are not efficient enough to play in most formats. Many cards break the current color pie and there are not really any cohesive themes that make the cards play together in fun ways as a set. Sure it's a bit of a fallacy, but it's totally valid to look back and say this set was all over the place if we accept a modern design standpoint.

Nobody is denying that there are powerful cards, flavorful cards, or design innovations that had a big impact on sets to come - this article is talking about what is good about the set, after all. In the spirit of this article series, please feel free to share what you love about Legends, but recognize that the article's point is not to say that Legends is "bad".

Anyway, I'd say Born of the Gods is probably your next best bet for sets people like to dump on. Maybe Dragon's Maze.

hyalapterouslemur broke the mechanics down well, but interestingly, the flaws we might find with Legends are almost all due to the incredible shifts in game literacy and game design theory that we have seen in the decades since this set came out. There are many cards here that are not fun because they slow down play, hose really specific strategies, or seem cool but are not efficient enough to play in most formats. Many cards break the current color pie and there are not really any cohesive themes that make the cards play together in fun ways as a set. Sure it's a bit of a fallacy, but it's totally valid to look back and say this set was all over the place if we accept a modern design standpoint.

Nobody is denying that there are powerful cards, flavorful cards, or design innovations that had a big impact on sets to come - this article is talking about what is good about the set, after all. In the spirit of this article series, please feel free to share what you love about Legends, but recognize that the article's point is not to say that Legends is "bad".

Anyway, I'd say Born of the Gods is probably your next best bet for sets people like to dump on. Maybe Dragon's Maze.

Dragons Maze for sure. Born of the Gods as well. Avacyn Restored gets some guff, but a few key cards keep it from getting trashed outside of its limited format. And, of course, Homelands and Fallen Empires. Was Battle for Zendikar poorly received, or was that just me?

And yes, I think we are all well aware that this isn't a series meant to argue that sets are bad. The "all sets are good" premise, however, works much better when focused on sets that were considered outright bad or at least underwhelming. Legends is, well, a legendary set known mostly for its flavor hits, its introduction of two of the most popular game mechanics, and several powerful, and $$$, cards (and eventually spawning EDH). Talking about Legends is less about saying "Oh, by the way, here are some neat things it did well mixed in with its missteps" and more about saying "Oh, by the way, here are some wacky mistakes the set made while printing all that gold."

Uh...either you are a really lazy writer or you weren't playing Magic in the 90's.

Chains of Mephistopheles? Concordant Crossroads? Karakas? LAND TAX? MOAT? SYLVAN LIBRARY? Underworld Dreams? Have you heard of any of these cards?

Even Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore, and Thunder Spirit, and Whirling Dervish saw play. It was the first set that had Boomerang, Force Spike, Remove Soul, and Spirit Link!

This set was literally gold. It only got better with age.

And when you say "wildly unbalanced cards"... all I can hear is some 15 or 16 year old kid say: What is Disenchant? Magic nowadays is like overly-watered down whiskey, it used taste good but they needed it to be palatable to a more sensitive market/generation.

Well, people saying Legends is a bad set...it's not really playable in limited or sealed. A lot of the creatures are very expensive to play. When your best limited beater is Thunder Spirit at 1WW and that's a rare card, yikes.

I do have a casual Jasmine Boreal deck that's based on destroying evil, peace prevailing, nature and the odd Shuriken, because I had thought for a long time she held a shuriken in her hand, whereas someone pointed out that she's holding a snowflake. Cards such as Fyndhorn Pollen, Northern Paladin, Southern Paladin, Penatarch Paladin, Cleanse, Shuriken, the meld Gisela and Bruna and so on. YOu get the idea, it's not very good but it's fun!

Legends is one of my fave all-time sets, but I always sucked at pack wars. My best card an Elder Land wurm and his? A Mana Drain lol...

Well, people saying Legends is a bad set...it's not really playable in limited or sealed. A lot of the creatures are very expensive to play. When your best limited beater is Thunder Spirit at 1WW and that's a rare card, yikes.

I do have a casual Jasmine Boreal deck that's based on destroying evil, peace prevailing, nature and the odd Shuriken, because I had thought for a long time she held a shuriken in her hand, whereas someone pointed out that she's holding a snowflake. Cards such as Fyndhorn Pollen, Northern Paladin, Southern Paladin, Penatarch Paladin, Cleanse, Shuriken, the meld Gisela and Bruna and so on. YOu get the idea, it's not very good but it's fun!

Legends is one of my fave all-time sets, but I always sucked at pack wars. My best card an Elder Land wurm and his? A Mana Drain lol...

Well, people saying Legends is a bad set...it's not really playable in limited or sealed. A lot of the creatures are very expensive to play. When your best limited beater is Thunder Spirit at 1WW and that's a rare card, yikes.

I do have a casual Jasmine Boreal deck that's based on destroying evil, peace prevailing, nature and the odd Shuriken, because I had thought for a long time she held a shuriken in her hand, whereas someone pointed out that she's holding a snowflake. Cards such as Fyndhorn Pollen, Northern Paladin, Southern Paladin, Penatarch Paladin, Cleanse, Shuriken, the meld Gisela and Bruna and so on. YOu get the idea, it's not very good but it's fun!

Legends is one of my fave all-time sets, but I always sucked at pack wars. My best card an Elder Land wurm and his? A Mana Drain lol...

I've been a fan of this series, but at no point do I remember anyone claiming Legends to be a bad set. A bad limited set, yes, because limited wasn't a concern back then, and a set where a number of decent to good at the time spells, and especially creatures, have gotten power creeped out of the game, but never bad. Hell, a single PACK of Legends sells for more than an entire box of Homelands or Prophecy. A lot of that has to do with Legends being much more rare, but a lot has to do with quality as well.

Still a good read going over the set, and it is a set that has some pretty maligned aspects, but the set overall was always a smashing success.

Was anyone really saying legends is a bad set? It's iconic as hell and has tons of powerful cards, maybe only second to alpha (although urza's saga puts up a good fight).

Not sure I'm convinced the legends rule is good (I don't even really see an argument that it is). Flavor-wise, it is (or at least used to be) a big win. These days...idk man. Having both versions of jhoira is fine, but having 2 of the same version isn't? Maybe it's supposed to be a multiple timelines thing, but then why can you and your opponent have one, but one poofs as soon as one switches sides? It feels like a top-down rule that's proven to be bad for gameplay, and at this point wotc is just trying to pay lip service to the flavor motivations while essentially destroying everything mechanically important about it.

Balance I would have to say it's second only to Alpha/Beta in this, and for the same reason: Literally no one knew the medium, and it took a few years. You get cards like Mana Drain, Sylvan Library, Land Tax, Eureka, The Abyss, Nether Void...and Aisling Leprechaun, the eight or so cards that mention bands with other, Part Water, Visions, Great Wall (the whole cycle, but Great Wall is particularly egregious), some improved laces when we know the entire lace concept is less than useless now. And Wood Elemental.Color pie It's probably not fair to complain about the color pie given that the mechanical color pie was in its embryonic state at this time. (tl;dr: Black and red can't destroy enchantments, white gets nearly all banding cards and green gets the rest...and that's about it.) So I won't.Fun Now, keep in mind, I define "fun" very narrowly. Many of these cards I personally enjoy, but I can see how a new player might not. Acid Rain is a definite "not". Arboria as well. Living Plane could either be really fun or a real pain in the ass. Moat? Presence of the Master? The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale? In the Eye of Chaos? Now, I'm a Stax player, so these "unfun" cards tend to be the bestest thing in the world to me as a member of Team Pain In The Ass, but they can vex new players. We just don't think about it because we teach new players with a subset of cards from Standard-legal sets (and, in a few months, a Core Set). Again, this is an early set thing: Naked Singularity was in Ice Age, so it's really around Mirage that things started tightening up; Tsunami, Flashfires, and Conversion all exist as a middle finger to blue, white, and red players respectively. (If they really want to see what eternal looks like, I let them barn a game of Commander between myself and similarly enfranchised players.)Rules/memory issues These two basically mean "mindspace", so I'm putting them together. Laces are a factor. (Portal: Three Kingdoms has the same issue with sorceries which should be auras.) WotC Oracled a lot of these cards to make the memory issues irrelevant by adding counters. The other issue is rules issues. Poor Ivory Guardians only gives a bonus to creatures of the same name because the guardian creature type was discounted. Again, bands with other. How does Blood Lust stack with other toughness-lowering effects again? Bands with other's reminder text (per Oracle, since you'd have to drop to 4-point at least to put it on a card) reads like an epic poem. Equinox? Again, it was learning curve, and I'm far more tolerant of Legends than I am of the Humility/Opalescence cluster **** that took nearly a decade to resolve properly.

The island is called Avenant. They're known for their archers, but also their ballistae. (Yeah, apparently d' is either genitive, "of Avenant", or ablative, "from Avenant".)

I think a lot of it was still Early Set Weirdness. The designers didn't know what they were doing because, frankly, no one did. Trading card games as a medium had literally only existed since Alpha. The result is, just like Alpha, instead of A, B, and C cards, you have A+ cards and D cards. And you had complicated rules. (This is in an odd spot. You see, in a board game or a card game like bridge, you know what every piece is going to be, and in video games, the computer can help with rules weirdness, but in Magic, new game pieces are being invented all the time.)

Legends also gives us Thunder Spirit, which is actually a better case for abolishing the Reserved List than the usual case presented. (It would fit into a lot of limited environments.)

It is kinda funny that multicolor cards and the eponymous legends are now a 1 on the Storm Scale, but the two keyword mechanics are a 9 (It turns out "When CARDNAME becomes blocked, it gets +N/+N." or "When CARDNAME becomes blocked, it gets +N/+N for each creature blocking it." is more grokkable.) and, breaking the scale, an 11.